Thank you for your interest in what we’re writing on the Upstairs’ blog. In order to receive an alert every time something new is posted you can use something called our “RSS Feed” to be automagically kept up to date.
In general, the first thing you need is something called a news reader. This is a piece of software that checks the feeds and lets you read any new articles that have been added. There are many different versions, some of which are accessed using a browser, and some of which are downloadable applications.
Browser-based news readers let you catch up with your RSS feed subscriptions from any computer, whereas downloadable applications let you store them on your main computer, in the same way that you either download your e-mail using Outlook, or keep it on a web-based service like Hotmail. Here’s some of the popular news readers:
- FeedDemon (downloadable, Windows only)
- NetNewsWire (downloadable, Apple Mac only)
- Google Reader (accessed by browser)
- Bloglines (accessed by browser)
Our RSS links are at the bottom of the right hand column. If you click on the RSS link you can subscribe to the feed in various ways, including by dragging the URL of the feed into your news reader or by cutting and pasting the same URL into a new feed in your news reader.
Some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Safari, automatically check for feeds for you when you visit a website, and display an icon when they find one. This can make subscribing to feeds much easier. For more details on these, please check their websites.